Ariel Sharon, the former prime minister of Israel, has been in a permanent vegetative state since suffering a massive stroke on January 4, 2006. For the past seven years, a respirator and a feeding tube have kept him alive at Sheba Hospital in Tel Hashomer, Israel. He has never shown any reliable signs of awareness or consciousness – until last week.

The stroke left the man once dubbed by Israelis as “the Lion of God” bedbound and technologically dependent on machines for his existence.